


Death After Life

by orphan_account



Series: Adventures of a Local Demon [2]
Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: (kinda), Beetlejuice? Sad as Fuck. Hotel? Trivago., Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Crying, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotionally Repressed, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Oh Yeah and Big Sandy Will Appear In Chapter 2, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 14:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21078188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Beetlejuice has a heart, and it's aching.Well, he doesn't have a literal heart. He's dead.But he had one for about thirty seconds! That counts, right? It was even all bloody and pierced at one point, just like all hearts are!(Beetlejuice has now been informed hearts aren't usually pierced and bloody... aaaaaaaaand his hair is purple again. Look what you did. You made a perfectly scary demon sad. Aw, look at that face! Shame on you.)





	Death After Life

**Author's Note:**

> there will be a chapter 2 of this... 
> 
> also i think i wrote this to practice analysis and interpretation but i veered off... oops?

Ask anyone, and they’ll say that being stabbed in the gut is painful. It is a critical hit, after all. 

Beetlejuice thought it was a bit freeing. Oh yeah, it hurt. It hurt  _ so much.  _ But in the situation he’d been in, it probably hurt more emotionally than physically. 

Demons don’t feel emotions. That’s a fact. They have feelings, moods. Basic, surface-level feelings. In Beetlejuice’s case, his hair reflected his mood. Sad? Purple. Normal? Green. Happy? Green. Mad? Red. Blah, blah, blah. That was just a result of him being who he was. 

Simple, and not hard to read. 

Sucks that marriage is the only way out of death, but he needed to get out. He was tired of being invisible. The living couldn’t see him, and the people who could were scared or were gonna leave. Being invisible made him sad. It made him purple. 

So, he married his best friend. His only friend. And it ruined their friendship. Of course, it would. His best friend was a young teen. He was a creepy old guy. That’s weird and wrong on so many levels. 

He’d tricked her, used the “bait and switch”. She used it back to murder him. It was fair.

Oh, but God/Satan those thirty seconds of being alive were the best (and worse, regarding the end) thirty seconds of his afterlife. He felt so many emotions. For once, they didn’t feel far off on Saturn. They weren’t just sitting on the top of his head like they usually did.

Beetlejuice could feel it in his heart. Anger, sadness, and happiness. Beetlejuice had a heart. 

Literally. 

Until he was dead again. His time with a human heart was over. 

The only good thing that came out of this whole ordeal was that he got to finally get rid of his mom for good. Well, at least for a couple of decades. 

He hoped that something good came out of it for Lydia too. He loved her. 

In a friendship kinda way, ‘ya nasties. Jeez.

Those were his thoughts as he was carried back into the Netherworld by his clones. 

Yes, the dramatic exit was very important. 

He looked back at the door only to realize: 

He felt love. Platonic or not, it was love. Love for those stupid Deetz and Maitlands. Those emotions he had in the short time he was alive stuck with him. 

He was more ghost than demon now. A 

very powerful dead guy. 

With the newfound feelings he had, he set off into the Netherworld. He was a newly-dead now. And as silly as it sounds, he had to make a life out of it. It made his stomach ache.

(His stomach wasn’t aching. He was feeling an entirely brand-new emotion. It was guilt. He just couldn’t identify it yet.) 

* * *

** _-Three Months Later-_ **

Lydia attended an all-girls private school. “Miss Shannon’s School for Young Girls”.

Yeah. More like “Miss Shannon’s for Prissy Bitches”. 

_ God,  _ she wanted to murder Claire Brewster! 

All that blonde bitch ever did was make fun of her, but Lydia was tough. She can take whatever’s being thrown at her. 

Today Claire crossed the line. 

That’s why Lydia was sobbing into her ugly uniform skirt in the school bathroom. She just couldn’t take it anymore. 

Claire has picked at Lydia’s weakness. 

Dead Mom. 

It was getting close to the anniversary of her Dead Mom’s death and Claire just decided to waltz in and tell Lydia she probably killed her mom by being a witch. Something along those lines, or maybe something worse.

Yeah, she didn’t know the half of it.

It just hurt so much, and the build-up of her negative emotions from earlier in the year broke the dam in her mind that held everything back. 

She thought about the roof of her house again. That time when she tried to off herself. 

Lydia hadn’t thought about it in a long time. 

She hadn’t thought about  _ him  _ for a long time.

Lydia needed a best friend. Unfortunately, she was out of living ones. She never had any in the first place. 

Oh, God. She was not in the right mind to do this. She would regret this, right? 

Lydia couldn’t see through the blur of tears in her eyes, she couldn’t hear through the blood rushing in her ears, and she couldn’t think straight with all these thoughts in her head. 

With desperation comes irrationality.

“Beetlejuice… Beetlejuice…” 

Her voice cracked. 

“Beetlejuice!”

__

* * *

A tug at his chest woke him up. 

God/Satan couldn’t he get some sleep once in a while? 

Another tug and he attempted to fix his hair, seeing as he didn’t have time to change out of his striped pajamas. 

One last tug pulled him right into the world of the living. He blinked and rubbed the crust out of his eyes only to find himself in a bathroom stall. 

Beetlejuice heard a sniff. 

“BJ?”

He looked down at the small girl in front of him. Dressed in a nice school uniform with a face full of snot, she made eye contact with him. 

“... Lydia?” 

Lydia launched herself off the floor and jumped into Beetlejuice’s stomach. She buried her face in his soft sleep shirt. 

He didn’t know what to do. Does he hug her back? 

Beetlejuice decided to put his hand on her back and rub it like he’d seen the Maitlands do once or twice.

After a minute he fully squeezed her back and they separated from each other. 

“I can’t believe you actually came!” Lydia exclaimed, still crying, though it had slowed down.

“That’s what happens when you say my name, Scarecrow. Speaking of, why’d you summon me? Need me to scare the daylights outta someone or…?” 

“No.”

“Uhh… kill someone?” 

Lydia giggled through tears. “Nooo!” 

“... Then why did you summon me?” 

“Because I wanted my best friend back, dummy!” 

_ Oh.  _

Beetlejuice narrowed his eyes. “Is this a “trick? You messing with me kid?” 

Lydia frowned. “No, why’d you think that?”

“I dunno… I thought you hated me!” 

“Beetlejuice, why would I hate you?” 

The ghost’s eyes bugged out of his face. Literally. With a grimace, Lydia pushed his eyes back into his skull. 

“Why? Lydia! You flatter me! But have you forgotten I tried to murder your whole family? Or how I tried to trap you in a marriage? Or…! Or that time I-”

Lydia covered his mouth with her hand.

“Beetlejuice. I forgive you.”

He licked her hand and she drew her hand away with disgust.

“Kid, you don’t have to lie-“ 

“I’m not! Pinkie swear!” He stuck out her hand and extended her pinkie.

_ Oh, so she was serious… _

Beetlejuice gulped. Lydia knew about pinkie swears, they were binding. If she didn’t comply she’d probably die in a… not fun fashion.

He shook her pinkie. The promise calmed him down.

“So uh, kid,” he coughed, “Why’re you… crying? Is that what that’s called? Leaking?” 

Lydia giggles again, but it sounded sadder. “Some bitch during lunch… can you take me home, BJ? I don’t want to be at this dumbass school anymore.” 

“Woah-ho-ho! You’d kiss a sandworm with that mouth?” he laughed, swinging an arm around Lydia.

Smoke filled the small stall they were in and when Lydia opened her eyes she was back at home in the kitchen, where two extremely spooked ghosts stood in shock. 

Barbara and Adam Maitland grabbed hold of the living girl and pulled her away from her dead best friend. Barbara stepped in front of Lydia protectively. 

“What are you doing here?! Lydia, what is it doing here!” 

“Hey! I have a name, Babs! I am not an ‘it’!” 

Beetlejuice could sense the fear in Barbara and felt bad about it. Feeling bad about stuff was still fairly fresh within him, and it made the demon uncomfortable. 

Barbara turned to Lydia, just put her hands up in mock surrender. 

_ Really, Babes? Throwing me under the bus?  _

“Okay, everyone chill. I’m not gonna hurt the munchkin’! I was just bringing her home!”

Adam spoke up. “Lydia, how did he find you?” 

“He didn’t find me, I summoned him.” 

They looked at her like she was crazy. 

Barbara whipped around. “You need to leave.” 

Beetlejuice could feel his hair turn blue and purple. He glanced at Lydia. 

“Babes?”

“Just… go,” she said with a defeated tone. She knew she was in big trouble for summoning him. 

Beetlejuice sighed. “Fine,” he growled, “my place in the netherworld is cooler than this place anyway. Sayanora!” 

He snapped twice and the lights flickered on and off, and when the Maitlands and Lydia could see again, he had vanished. 

Lydia worried the exit was too quiet and un-dramatic for Beetlejuice.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are welcomed! (stay tuned for chapter 2!)


End file.
